


to smile and feel nothing

by annadavidson



Series: we can change the whole world (next justice series) [3]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Gen, Next Generation, Next-Gen, Next-Gen AU, Next-Gen DC Comics, next generation dc comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 16:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10282979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annadavidson/pseuds/annadavidson
Summary: Some nights he just felt empty, like there was nothing in him.Prompt: Empty.





	

Some nights he just felt _empty,_ like there was nothing in him. No emotions. No thoughts. It used to worry his teammates when they hadn’t known him for long. Now they understood this was just something he went through. There wasn’t anything that could stop this feeling. It would eventually go away on its own, only to return again, but he was trying to look on the brighter side. Looking on the brighter side of things was easy to fake, but it wasn’t easy to try it truthfully. And it wasn’t easy right now.

Usually he would have at least some of his teammates to sit with him, but here… _Here_ he was alone. Arkham’s Juvenile Center was a poor attempt at dealing with children of notorious and often _super_ villains. The building itself was kept clean. Upon first glance, one would think it was actually a good place to put criminally inclined kids in and rehabilitate them. But it was still Arkham. The only thing that separated them from the adults was property and a large gate.

The guards were still cruel and corrupt. Some started out with good intentions, but Gotham had a habit of twisting good intentions until they were unrecognizable. He was honestly surprised that Gotham’s heroes managed to stay good and had no clue how they did it. He had met many soft people who had told him they wanted to help. Soft people gotten eaten up, devoured until all that was left in their body was uncaring cruelty.

Harvey sat with his legs tucked under him on a cushioned chair, surrounded by glass walls. The Center was funded partly by Wayne Enterprises. Because of that, Bruce Wayne sometimes showed up. He was genuinely nice, and sometimes Harvey allowed himself the luxury of believing a man like Bruce Wayne might actually care if he gets help or not. A man like that might actually _want_ him to get help. But people could lie, and they could lie well. Perhaps Bruce Wayne was an honest man. Perhaps he was a liar. Harvey thought he might not ever know.

What he admittedly liked the most was when the youngest Wayne son visited with his father. Josh Wayne wouldn’t talk to him much, but he still thought he was quite attractive. He liked when he was able to make Josh blush. It was entertaining to watch the usually very composed teenager fumble and fluster about.

Unfortunately his visitor wasn’t Bruce Wayne and they certainly weren’t one of his attractive offspring. The psychiatrist was an elderly woman who looked like the type to lure a brother and sister into her house made of sweets to fatten them up and bake them. He didn’t say that out loud, though. That would have been rude.

“How have you been?” she always started out with that question. He was certain she was the main psychiatrist at the Center.

 _Empty_ was the word that came to mind.

“What answer do you want?” he threw back at her instead. She sat in a chair opposite of him, dressed in a black pantsuit with her grey hair pulled up in a tight bun. She had one leg folded over the other, her hands clasped together, resting against her lap.

“How about the truth,” she replied, raising an eyebrow at him.

Harvey pursed his lips and tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. After a moment, he said, “But the truth isn’t fun.”

“It can be.”

He shook his head, strands of his sandy blonde hair falling in his face. He probably needed a haircut, but his hair wasn’t touching his shoulders yet so he thought he was fine. “Lying is fun – that’s why everyone does it.”

She let out a sigh. Talking with him was always a game. He enjoyed frustrating people, making them make a double take, making them question what was going on. He liked confusing people with logic that made perfect sense to him. He’d heard people say it was because he was mentally ill, but they had diagnosed him with borderline personality disorder and PTSD, and he’d looked up the symptoms and didn’t think that was on the list. He wasn’t a doctor, but he also didn’t like people throwing mental illness around as an explanation for anything that didn’t make sense to them, that didn’t add up to their own sense of logic. He thought when people did that, it wasn’t fair for those who actually lived with mental illnesses.

_“Harvey…”_

He couldn’t help frowning. “I’m in a strait jacket and my nose itches, how do you _think_ I’ve been?” He thought he should have heard frustration in his tone, but it was even, emotionless instead. _Empty._ He wished he could say there was something else he felt but there wasn’t. All he felt was a sense of emptiness. He just hoped it would fade away soon.

“You usually seem _happier_ when we talk,” she pointed out, and Harvey held back a laugh. _Seeming_ happy wasn’t the same thing as actually _being_ happy. Apparently she didn’t get that. He thought over if it would be beneficial to point that out and decided it wouldn’t. “Why are you in a strait jacket?”

She always asked dumb questions, he thought – questions with obvious answers. Why else would he be in a strait jacket? People often weren’t thrown in strait jackets for fun. Well then again this _was_ Arkham.

“They say I’m dangerous,” he answered.

“To them or yourself?”

Another obvious answer, he thought. “To everyone.”

She wrote something down on a piece of paper she had clipped to a clipboard. “Are they correct? Are you dangerous?” She looked up from the clipboard at him without raising her head.

He put on his best wicked grin and noticed her visibly tense. He had unwillingly learned that grin from his father. “You tell me, doc.”

She hesitated before standing up. He didn’t think she was brave for sitting down one on one with kid criminals. There was always several guards stationed outside he could see through the glass walls – heavily armed guards. She had insisted that she didn’t need the guards before. He thought that made her stupid, not brave. She underestimated the Center’s charges because they were juveniles, _children._ She didn’t think children would be the death of her. He wondered if she would ever be proved wrong.

“I think we’re done for today,” she said hurriedly. It was the grin, it always was. It made people get uncomfortable and want to leave. It reminded them too much of his father. And even if he wanted nothing to do with his father, wanted to stay as far away from that clown as possible, everyone still seemed to always associate the two of them together. A curse he would never be rid of.

She left the glass room and was replaced by two of the guards. They each tightly grabbed him by his arms and roughly yanked him out of the room. He didn’t protest or crack a terrible joke. Instead, he remained quiet as they threw him back into his cell and locked the door. Normally he would have yelled some jokes through the door, but he didn’t feel like it. He wanted to leave. He just needed to wait for Olivia and Ishi to come up with a plan to break him and the rest of their teammates out. Until then, he would wait in his cell and count the minutes until that emptiness started to fade away.

It was roughly six in the morning when he woke up and realized he didn’t feel empty anymore. He wasn’t happy, but that sense of emptiness was gone or at least subdued. He felt so relieved that he laughed loudly, and the sound echoed throughout the Center.

**Author's Note:**

> Like/reblog on Tumblr [here](http://magicrobins.tumblr.com/post/158375360170/17-empty).


End file.
